Pie on the Brain

In preparation for Thanksgiving, this past weekend I taught a class called "How to be a Pie Ninja".  30 people showed up and we had a blast sharpening our pie making skills and demystifying the art of pie dough. The best part of the class was watching each group of people decide on the spices, fillings and decoration for their pies. It was wonderful to see people getting comfortable with the process of making a pie from scratch, a task that can seem intimidating to some. Really, when it comes down to it, if you can follow a recipe you can make pie, and if you do it a few times you start to see what works and what doesn't. The best part is, pie makes people happy, and it doesn't have to look pretty to taste good. We donated these 6 pies to Downtown Evening Soup Kitchen for their holiday meal.

Here are some links to some of my pie recipes, and our pie party from last winter. My favorite pie dough recipe is linked below as well.

Pumpkin or Sweet Potato Pie
Peach and Raspberry Pie
Pie Party 2011


Life has been so busy this year, that I haven't been able to post the dozens of ideas I wanted to share about food for the Thanksgiving meal. For some Thanksgiving inspiration, check out our table from 2009, or 2010.

Here are a few wonderful links to pie obsessed bloggers that I have enjoyed, not to mention some excellent recipes:
A cool blog, thepech.com, where a nyc family celebrated 'pie month':
A great article from Melissa Clark on pie doughs, and some great pie recipes as well.


The Best Pie Dough
1 1/4 cups all-purpose flour (1 cup white flour plus 1/4 cup or more whole wheat flour or wheat germ)
1 tablespoon sugar
1/2 teaspoon salt
8 tablespoons (1 stick) cold unsalted butter, cut into 1-inch pieces
1/4 cup ice water
1/2 teaspoon vinegar (white or cider)

   1. Make the pie dough: Cut butter into 1-inch pieces and place in the freezer for 15 minutes. Measure and sift all of the dry ingredients. In a mixer, food processor or using two forks,  cut the butter into the dough until it is the size of larger peas. Some larger sized piece of butter are good, just pinch them flat. Add the ice water and vinegar and mix dough till combined, dough should be tacky, but not sticky. If the dough is crumbling apart, it is too dry, add a spoonful more water. Gently form the dough into a disc, wrap with plastic wrap and place in the refrigerator for one hour or longer until well chilled.

   2. Preheat the oven to 375°. On a lightly floured work surface, roll out the dough to an 11-inch round about 1/8 inch thick. Transfer the dough to a 9-inch pie dish and trim the overhang to 3/4 inch; fold the overhang under itself and crimp decoratively. Prick the bottom of the pie shell all over and refrigerate until firm.

   3. Line the shell with foil and fill with pie weights or dried beans. Bake for about 20 minutes, or until lightly golden around the edge. Remove the foil and the weights and bake for about 12 minutes longer, or until the pie shell is golden brown and cooked on the bottom. Cover the rim of the pie shell with foil when it starts to brown. Leave the oven on.

Have a great Thanksgiving!!

Braised Kale with Tomato

A few years ago I was shopping at the US 1 Caribbean Market and saw this woman stuffing huge bunches of kale into bags, filling her cart. At the time I had just finished the arduous process of collecting recipes for the New Haven Cooks cookbook and had been asking people across the city for their favorite recipes featuring vegetables and fruits. It was shocking how many people sent me a chicken recipe, dip, or fried seafood recipe with not a thought to vegetables, no less one in the ingredient list. So the site of a woman joyfully filling her cart with the largest bunches of kale I had ever seen made my heart race a bit, and I just had to know what she was planning to do with them.

She may have thought I was a little crazy, nosing around in her shopping cart, but she smiled and told me that she cooks her kale with lots of onion, garlic, tomato and a little hot pepper. I didn't get much more detail than that. I'd bet if I'd gotten to stand next to her at the stove, there might have been some other key ingredient like allspice berries, smokey paprika, or vinegar....I guess I'll never know, but she inspired me to start cooking my greens with tomato, and the rest I leave up to my imagination...

This is a great dish for fall and winter. You can use any type of kale, or even collard greens.

Braised Kale with Tomato

1 large bunch kale 

1 medium onion

3 cloves garlic

1 -15oz can diced tomatoes, or fresh tomatoes, chopped
1 small hot pepper, seeds removed or 1/4 teaspoon red pepper flakes

3 tablespoons olive oil

Salt and pepper - to taste

 

Optional ingredients: allspice berries, smokey paprika or ground chipotle, vinegar.

1. Wash Kale. Slice kale into 1/2inch strips. discard thick part of stem at the bottom of the bunch. Cut across the strips a few times to shorten the pieces. 

2. Cut the onion into a small dice or fine julienne, sauté in olive oil with salt and pepper over medium heat until translucent. Finely chop the garlic and add to the pan. Add hot pepper or spices if using, sauté until fragrant, do not allow garlic to brown. 

3. Add diced tomato to the pan, bring to a simmer. If using vinegar, add it now. Taste broth and adjust seasoning. Add kale and stir to coat. Cover pan and simmer for 5 minutes. Check kale for tenderness and adjust seasoning.

I generally cook my greens for a short time to retain as much of their nutrients as possible. Taste the greens after 5 minutes to determine if you like them this way or want to cook them a little longer.

How do you like to cook kale?

Please share below!

Apple and Cider Crisp

I created this delicious low sugar apple crisp recipe last fall, and now that the weather has turned cool, I've started to make it again. I can tell it is going to be a staple for the next few months, so I wanted to re-post the recipe. If you want to simplify it event further, just apples, cider and a bit of cinnamon for the filling works great, and a 1/4 recipe tossed in a small oven-safe skillet to cook during dinner makes an easy, healthy dessert.

To read the original post, click here.

Arepas

While I'd like to say that I discovered these wonderful corn "pancakes" while traveling in Colombia, or at my Venezuelan friend's house, I actually owe my love of them to the streets of New York. I first encountered arepas more than a decade ago in the generic street fairs that squeeze onto the streets of New York during the summer and fall. Under the arepa vendor's tent there was a large griddle perpetually covered with yellow sweet corn arepa pancakes, speckled with corn kernels and melted cheese in various stages of done-ness, (if that's even a word). The first time I ate these I went right home and tried to make them with some fine cornmeal I had in the kitchen; the result was a pasty inedible mess. It wasn't till years later that I found arepa flour, which is a precooked corn meal, and discovered the simplicity of making them at home. I think Goya makes a brand that is widely available, but I have not used it. The Doñarepa brand is delicious, as I'm sure many of them are. From what I can tell each country or region seems to have one favorite brand, some yellow, some white, so you'll have to try them out to see what you like.  I must say, generally I try to buy organic corn products because they are one of the most highly genetically engineered crops, but this is one of the few exceptions I make because those darn arepas are so addictive, and the memories of the sweet hot corn pancakes in NYC just never seem to be satiated no matter how many of these I make at home....

Sweet Corn Arepas

Follow the instructions on the package if different from these.

The fresh corn and cheese are optional as well, you can make arepas with just the arepa corn flour and water. 


1 cup yellow arepa flour
1 cup warm water
1 tablespoon butter (optional)
1/2 salt (or to taste)
1/2 teaspoon sugar (optional)
1/2 cup fresh or thawed corn kernels
1/4 cup finely chopped mozzarella or fresh cheese
oil for cooking



 

1. Mix warm water and arepa flour, sugar, salt and butter until it forms a moist but not sticky dough. let sit for 10 minutes. If it gets dry add a bit more water. Mix in the corn kernels and cheese. 
2. Form the dough into balls and then flatten into pancakes between your hands. You can also roll the dough into a log and chill in the refrigerator for 1 hour to 2 days until you are ready to cook them, then slice the dough into rounds. Cook arepas in a hot pan with a small amount of oil until browned on both sides.

Arepas are delicious with eggs, beans, meat, vegetables, for breakfast, lunch or dinner.  For this meal I served them with black beans with small pieces of pan fried maduros(sweet plantain), sautéed Kale and peppers with caramelized onions and a bit of pan fried queso fresco, a mexican fresh cheese. 

My 3 year old was well occupied during all this cooking with a hand full of arepa dough. She rolled and patted her way right through until dinner was ready. It always amazes me how easy it is to engage kids in the cooking process when I have the energy to do it....

There is a very well known arepa restaurant in NYC which makes the white corn variety common in Venezuela. These are a bit puffier and are sliced open and stuffed with delicious fillings.

Check out the Caracas Arepa Bar for more info.

In New Haven, CT a popular spot for yellow corn arepas is Manjares cafe.

 

Do you LOVE arepas too?
How do you make them?
Please share by commenting below!

Food Day 2011

If you haven't heard, the first national Food Day is happening this year Monday, October 24, 2011. When I first caught wind of this earlier this year, I got pretty excited imagining block parties with long tables set up down the middle of the street, neighbors sharing healthy home-cooked foods and people coming together to eat and talk about food in our community. As the Chair of the New Haven Food Policy Council, a chef and a mother, I felt it was my duty to make a little noise about Food Day. So, we gathered a large group of leaders in our city and started to plan. Since all of us are spread thin, we tried to build on the good work already going on: The WIC offices will be doing events using the New Haven Cooks/Cocina New Haven cookbook, schools are conducting real food events and tastings, people are opening up their backyard gardens to visitors, and so much more.

Food Day is a national campaign to draw attention to and celebrate healthy, affordable foods produced in a humane, sustainable way and to fix the food system by:

·       Reducing obesity and diet-related disease by promoting safe, healthy foods

·       Supporting sustainable family farms and cutting subsides to huge agribusiness

·       Ending urban and rural “food deserts” by providing access to healthy foods

·       Protecting the environment and farm animals by reforming factory farms

·       Promoting children’s health by curbing junk-food marketing aimed at kids

·       Obtaining fair wages for all workers in the food system

There are over 1500 events happening nation wide so far. 

There is still time for you to get involved! 

To truly change anything about our food environment, we need to change the culture of food in our communities. Hosting a pot-luck with your neighbors, sharing some delicious healthy recipes, talking to people about food justice and sustainability issues, holding a food drive at your job, signing a petition or inspiring a recipe collection at your place of worship or neighborhood organization, all of these are the small things that truly bring about change. I can attest to this personally, since a few times a week someone contacts me to say that a recipe they found on my blog is now a staple in their family, or that their child now eats more vegetables and fruits since they learned some new techniques for feeding their family from the blog or cookbook. These are small changes, one person at a time, but the cumulative effects of all of us sharing our knowledge and making small changes, really will have an impact in the long run. So, I know it's short notice, but check out the Food Day site for info and their incredible resource page for their dinner party kit, film screening kit, Food Day curriculum and so much more!

If you are in New Haven please register your event on the fooddaynh.org site or find a local event there. Get creative have fun with it help to make some change to bring about good food for everyone!

If you'd like to visit a Farm for food day find one here: localharvest.org

If you want to go fruit picking find a location here: pickyourown.org

Please share your thoughts and ideas below!

The Best Apple Cake - Again

It's apple season, and while there are 100 fabulous sweet and savory things to make with apples, I just have to re-post this wonderful apple cake recipe that I discovered last year! It is simple, delicious and moist, with a sugary crispy edge. My mouth is watering just thinking about this cake.... 

If you are interested in going apple picking, check out www.pickyourown.org for a location near you.

Yes, it's that good.....

The Best Apple Cake

adjusted from the original Teddie's Apple Cake

Butter or oil for greasing the pan

2 cups all purpose flour

1 cup whole wheat flour

1 1/2 cups oil

1 cup sugar

3/4 cup light brown sugar packed

3 eggs

1 teaspoon salt

1 teaspoon cinnamon

3/4 teaspoon ground cardamom

1 teaspoon baking soda

1 teaspoon vanilla

3 cups apples, pealed, cored and cut in thick slices or 3/4-inch cubes

1 to 2 cups chopped or coarsely ground nuts (walnuts or pecans are best)

1/2 cup currants or raisins

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Butter and flour a 9-inch tube pan. Beat the oil and sugar together in a mixer (fitted with a paddle attachment) while assembling the remaining ingredients. After about 5 minutes, add the eggs and beat until the mixture is creamy.
2.  Sift together 3 cups of flour, the salt, cinnamon, cardamom and baking soda. Stir into the batter. Add the vanilla, apples, nuts and raisins and stir until combined. 
3. Transfer the mixture to the prepared pan. Bake for 1 hour and 15 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean. Cool in the pan before turning out. Serve at room temperature.

Feast from the Fields 2011

What an amazing night. Last weekend I cooked for a fund raising dinner for 250 people at an urban charter high school with an organic farm. Most of the ingredients traveled only a few feet to arrive in the kitchen including the pig, the chicken, and nearly all of the vegetables. The honey, peaches and cheese were from other nearby farms, and only the oil, butter, flour, sugar, pasta and spices were purchased from afar. 

Another local chef, myself, and many students, teachers and kitchen staff from Common Ground High School cooked and served up this fabulous dinner. A wonderful accomplishment, a great learning experience for the students, and a real gift to the community in so many ways. The meal, the silent auction and live auction raised $40,000 for the school.

Unfortunately I do not posses the skill to cook, coordinate a meal like this AND photograph it, so the true essence of the night: enthusiastic, capable teenagers representing the diversity of our little city, cooking, cleaning, working, learning, serving, eating, and growing was not captured in photos. Jason Sobosinski from Caseus restaurant and "The Big Cheese" Food Network Show and I planned and cooked the meal. It was a fun mash-up of our two styles, and in the end it worked wonderfully. The unbelievably hard working coordinator of the event, Joel Tolman is a colleague and friend of mine: thoughtful, smart, collaborative, and an incredible force. Shannon, the new farmer for the school is working wonders with the land and supplied us with an abundance of food: cucumbers, beets, red onions, winter squash, salad greens, kale, chard, herbs, garlic, a 165 pound pig, and more than a dozen chickens.  And a big thank you goes out to Rhonda, Thea and Theresa, the Common Ground Cooks and all the students who helped to prep hundreds of pounds of produce from the farm and wash lots and lots of dishes!!!
 

Here are some snippets of the food from the night:

 

Menu

Cider Brined Slow Roasted Whole Pig

Poblano Pepper Apple Sauce

Buttermilk-Marinated Common Ground Fried Chicken

Fresh Thyme and Lemon Zest   

Mac and Beaverbrook Farms Cow & Sheep Cheese

Garlic Braised Common Ground Kales & Chards 

Common Ground Quick Pickle Red Onion &          Cucumber Salad with Basil and Tarragon

Common Ground Arugula and Mixed Greens, Roasted Delicata and Candy Roaster Squash & Shredded Beets

Roasted Scallion and Ground Pepita dressing

Beltane Farms Chevre

Warm Honey Bourbon Peach Short Cake & Homemade Creme Fraiche

Our fabulous student waitstaff for the night

 
 Scallions for the salad dressing roasting on the hot coals of the pig roasting box

 

Pickled red onions with tarragon and basil, waiting to be tossed with the cucumbers

 

The pig named "milkbottle" being brined and seasoned to go into the cook box. The students raised this pig, and many stopped by to say "hi" to it, or were fascinated to see how it would be cooked. A few students were sad, which is very understandable, but most were very interested in the process and they all knew he was being raised for food. I had the experience of raising and slaughtering a chicken once when I was a teen, and it gave me a life long appreciation and consciousness about animal rearing and the sources of meat in our country. I now only eat meat that is sustainably raised (which is more expensive and harder to find, so I eat a lot less meat than the average person).

 Thea and Jason cooking fried chicken, also raised on the farm. 

As you can see, they kept things lively in the kitchen!

I was very happy with how the salad turned out. The roasted scallions added a smoky depth to the dressing, and the ground pumpkin seeds gave it a nutty sweetness. The greens, a mix grown on the farm, had been harvested the day before, and it was topped with roasted delicata and candy roaster squashes, which can both be cooked without peeling them, which makes the prep time much quicker, and helps hold the squash together for a dish like this. To add some brightness to the dish, the beets were shredded raw using a fine shredding attachment to the food processor, and some delicious fresh chevre (goat cheese) from Beltane Farms rounded out the dish nicely.

 

Jason, as a master of all things cheese, made Mac and Cheese using a wonderful assortment of cheeses from Sankows-Beaverbrook Farm.

For dessert we wanted to use an end of summer fruit rather than the usual apples and pears of fall. The white and yellow peaches were the final harvest from near-by Drazen Orchards, a great family run orchard where they practice IPM - integrated pest management to greatly minimize the amount of pesticides and fungicides used. The peaches had to be harvested a few weeks before the dinner, and wouldn't have lasted in the fridge, so a group of students sliced and froze them on sheet pans (no need to peel them!), then transfered them to a large bag. Since they had been frozen we needed to cook them for dessert, so the were roasted with a local honey, bourbon and vanilla bean sauce.

  

The shortcakes came out great, thanks to the fabulous recipe from Caludia Flemming's 

incredible cookbook "The Last Course".

 The completed dessert: Warm Honey Bourbon Peach Shortcake with Homemade Creme Fraiche.

Creme Fraiche, a french style sour cream, is very easy to make at home, rather than buying an expensive container from the store. 

2 Tablespoons of cultured butter milk or yogurt

2 cups of heavy cream (pasteurized is better than ultrapasteurized)

1. Mix the ingredients together well. Cover with a towel and let sit out on the counter for 12 to 24 hours, until it is as thick as sour cream. It will keep in the refrigerator for up to 2 weeks. For dessert it can be served straight or sweetened and whipped.It can be used in savory dishes as you would use sour cream.

I will post recipes for the complete shortcake dessert, and the salad in the near future, 

so check back soon!

And, if you live anywhere near New Haven, CT go check out Common Ground School, there are lots of opportunities to visit during open farm days and festivals!

Roasted Tomato Sauce

Between the heat of late summer, bugs, and hurricane Irene, my garden has seen better days. While September is prime harvest season on a farm, the offerings from my backyard are meager this year, with one exception. The tangle of tomato plants in one raised bed, generally referred to as "the tomato forest" managed to blow flat without snapping, and so survived the hurricane. The cherry tomato plants are prolific, and just when I think I've picked the last of the fruits, another wave of tomatoes arrives. This year I have Sungolds (which yield a ton of sweet orange cherry tomatoes), a red standard cherry tomato, large heirloom Brandywines for slicing, and some seeds from last year called michael's wedding that sprouted up around the garden, and I let a few of them grow (those are tiny red tomatoes  that spit when picked, so I didn't buy them again, but they are fine for eating right off the vine).

Every few days we pick a bowlful, about a pint of cherry tomatoes, often they are eaten in the distance between the garden and the kitchen door and don't make it into a meal. With the weather turning colder last week, a warm dinner was on my mind.  Simple and quick, I boiled some whole grain pasta, and started slicing the cherry tomatoes in half for roasting. I then turned my attention to finely chopping a large amount of onion and garlic, which cooked at a low heat in plenty of olive oil until they were tender and fragrant. The tomatoes were added, sauteed for a moment, then stuck under the broiler to blister and release their juices. The rest of the dinner came together mostly as an after thought; some spinach leaves got tossed in with the pasta and black beans were added for protein. I'd had illusions of fish joining this meal rather than beans: some canned salmon left over from our hurricane provisions, but fish from a can just wasn't doing it for me that night. Lastly, I snagged a handful of marjoram on my way out the backdoor, tossed it with the pasta, and we had a meal. My kids complained that this was not what they thought I meant when I said we were having pasta with tomato sauce for dinner, but they grudgingly ate it anyway, and I was content with the tangy juices of the fresh tomatoes, and the olive oil, thickly laced with sweet onion and garlic. Nothing fancy or magnificent about it, just a simple good meal.

 

Roasted Tomato Sauce

4 servings

1pint cherry tomatoes or 3/4 pound other tomatoes

1 large onion

4 cloves garlic

1/4 cup olive oil

salt and pepper to taste

any fresh or dry herbs you like such as marjoram, basil, oregano, thyme, mint etc...

1. Finely dice onion and mince garlic. Saute onion in olive oil over low heat in a large wide skillet. Season well with salt and pepper. When tender, add garlic. Saute until garlic is fragrant, do not brown.
2. While onions are cooking, slice cherry tomatoes in half, or cut larger tomatoes into a large dice.  Set oven to broil on high.
3. When onion and garlic mixture is very tender, add tomatoes and toss to coat with oil.  Place under the broiler and cook until tomatoes are blistered and browned on edges. Remove from oven and toss with pasta and herbs, adding any ingredients you like: spinach, zucchini, beans, fish, etc...a fine grating of cheese is always good too.  Enjoy!

 What are you making with the end of summer produce?